Love and Emily Dickinson
I am going out on the doorstep, to get you some new—green grass—I shall pick it down in the corner, where you and I used to sit, and have long fancies. And perhaps the dear little grasses were growing all the while—and perhaps they heard what we said, but they can't tell!
– Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert Dickinson (L 85, 1852)
Seventy-five years after the 1890s publication of the premier volumes of Emily Dickinson's poetry, critics still squabble about the poet's possibly lesbian relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Indeed, the specifics of Dickinson's relationship to Susan are ambiguous at best. All of the critical attention that her mysterious sexuality receives reflects our culture's urge to sectionalize great literary icons into our own personal niches, thereby absorbing them as our “group's” own voice. The poet, not the poetry, assumes the center of the discussion. The critics, whether arguing for or against a lesbian interpretation of the famed couple, are like two disgruntled neighbors arguing over a tree known for its particularly incendiary wood. They no longer focus on this evergreen's innate beauty but, rather, on whose property it resides and who has the right to cut it down to ignite their cause. In all actuality, we will never know the truth about the pair's physical relationship; the evidence is too ethereal to assume a definable substance. And, in part, this predictable public response motivated Susan Gilbert's reluctance to release Dickinson's poems and letters after the poet's death.
Emily Dickinson's life has been thoroughly explored by scholars and critics. Her extensive correspondence with all of her family and frien...
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... longing for another, which transcend physical intimacy. Emily Dickinson's eloquent, overwhelming, consuming desire for a true companion is expressed as intensely in her words as it is felt in our souls.
Works Cited
Hart, Ellen Louise. “The Encoding of Homoerotic Desire: Emily Dickinson's Letters and Poems to Susan Dickinson, 1850-1886.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 9 (1990): 251-72.
Koski, Lena. “Sexual Metaphors in Emily Dickinson's Letters to Susan Gilbert.”The Emily Dickinson Journal 5.2 (1996): 26-31.
Sewall, Richard. The Life of Emily Dickinson. 2 vols. New York: Farrar, 1974.
Smith, Martha Nell. “The Belle of the Belle of Amherst.” Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review 3.1 (1996): 25-27.
“Susan and Emily Dickinson: Their Lives, in Letters.” The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 51-73.
“Pretty Ophelia,” as Claudius calls her, is the most innocent victim of Hamlet’s revenge in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Hamlet has fallen in love with Ophelia after the death of his father. Ophelia “sucked the honey of his music vows” and returned Hamlet’s affection. But when her father had challenged Hamlet’s true intentions, Ophelia could only say: “I do not know, my lord, what I should think.” Ophelia was used to relying on her father’s directions and she was also brought up to be obedient. This allowed her to only accept her father’s views that Hamlet’s attention towards her was only to take advantage of her and to obey her father’s orders not to permit Hamlet to see her again.
Emily Dickinson’s “What shall I do – it whimpers so”, Franklin number 237, analyzes the codependent nature of some romantic relationships and dramatizes the tension that arises when there is a disparity in the devotion that two people have for one another in those relationships. The speaker compares the feelings she has for her beloved to those of a subservient dog for his master; she acknowledges that the only time she can be free and content is when she is with her lover. A psychoanalytic reading of the work reveals the speaker’s fear of abandonment and unstable sense of self.
Edith Wylder, The Last Face: Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971).
Many couples in the United States idealize the myth of a “tradition family”. The idea that a woman can spend quality time with her child while maintaining an effective sexual life with her partner seemed to have caused a lot of stress during the 1950s. Coontz’s says “this hybrid idea drove thousands of women to therapists, tranquilizers, or alcohol when they tried to live up to it.” (Coontz, 569). Which explains that it is merely impossible to try to mold a family to be “ideal.” Many families still strive for a traditional life, which they define as life “back in the day.” They need to forget the past and start living in the 21st century. “Two-thirds of respondents to one national poll said they wanted more traditional standards of family life.”(Coontz, 582). Which goes to show that many families want to change to what once used to be perceived as an “ideal family” but “the same percentage of people rejected the idea that women should return to their traditional role.”(Coontz, 582). Families want to take bits and pieces from what used to be “traditional families” over time and create their own i...
“Although Emily Dickinson is known as one of America’s best and most beloved poets, her extraordinary talent was not recognized until after her death” (Kort 1). Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her life with her younger sister, older brother, semi-invalid mother, and domineering father in the house that her prominent family owned. As a child, she was curious and was considered a bright student and a voracious reader. She graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847, and attended a female seminary for a year, which she quitted as she considered that “’I [she] am [was] standing alone in rebellion [against becoming an ‘established Christian’].’” (Kort 1) and was homesick. Afterwards, she excluded herself from having a social life, as she took most of the house’s domestic responsibilities, and began writing; she only left Massachusetts once. During the rest of her life, she wrote prolifically by retreating to her room as soon as she could. Her works were influenced ...
...nation to her inevitable death corresponds to her limited (vacant) freedom of speech and license to develop her own convictions and individual identity and question authority. Secondly, Ophelia’s surrender to her imminent fate also echoes her unstable, manipulative, and emotional abusive relationship with Hamlet and the hierarchy in her dynamic, as she always obeys without hesitation. Regardless of how Ophelia’s death began, the result was a suicide, as the pure (graceful), serene, and beautiful imagery of her suicide implies that her death was a last effort to recover her dignity, rebel against her oppressors, and exert her free will. For Ophelia, a life of oppression and blind obedience drove her to a frailty of mind, and in her last moments, she chose death over dishonor to defeat the inner demons threatening to condemn her to an otherwise hopeless existence.
Ophelia, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, represents a self-confident and aware female character. She analyzes the world around her and recognizes the multitude of male figures attempting to control her life. Her actions display not only this awareness, but also maturity in her non-confrontational discussions. Though she is demeaned by Laertes, Polonius, and Hamlet, Ophelia exhibits intelligence and independence and ultimately resorts to suicide in order to free herself from the power of the men around her.
Emily Dickinson is one of the great visionary poets of nineteenth century America. In her lifetime, she composed more poems than most modern Americans will even read in their lifetimes. Dickinson is still praised today, and she continues to be taught in schools, read for pleasure, and studied for research and criticism. Since she stayed inside her house for most of her life, and many of her poems were not discovered until after her death, Dickinson was uninvolved in the publication process of her poetry. This means that every Dickinson poem in print today is just a guess—an assumption of what the author wanted on the page. As a result, Dickinson maintains an aura of mystery as a writer. However, this mystery is often overshadowed by a more prevalent notion of Dickinson as an eccentric recluse or a madwoman. Of course, it is difficult to give one label to Dickinson and expect that label to summarize her entire life. Certainly she was a complex woman who could not accurately be described with one sentence or phrase. Her poems are unique and quite interestingly composed—just looking at them on the page is pleasurable—and it may very well prove useful to examine the author when reading her poems. Understanding Dickinson may lead to a better interpretation of the poems, a better appreciation of her life’s work. What is not useful, however, is reading her poems while looking back at the one sentence summary of Dickinson’s life.
In both clinical care and research, the use of brain imaging, also known as “neuroimaging”, is becoming an increasingly important technique. New technologies such as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or FMRI, allow researchers to study the brain at a level which was never thought possible. This noninvasive procedure allows researchers to visualize brain structure and function, at both the molecular and whole brain level (A.) Scientists are now able to better understand neural networks and a variety of other cognitive processes. For the first time in human history, extremely complex wonders of the brain are being uncovered. Psychiatric diseases, human emotion, personality traits, and many other phenomena that were once mysteries are now being deeply analyzed and understood. Each day new doors are being opened...
...r works, and certainly, the more the traditional the establishment, book or website, the more invisible this possibility becomes. Since Dickinson's works were unintended for publication, the public is entitled via her family to make their own assumptions about her and her work. I contend that the writing style of Dickinson's letters and poetry was conceived with genius, edited and re-edited with that same genius. To take pen to her works, which are by their nature, concise and spare in language, but rich in symbolism, ingenuity, punctuation and grammatical engineering is an insult to her work, and frankly few would succeed in retaining that genius unless merely replacing gender indicative words and imagery.
Dickinson was unique and the “exception” in creating a private relationship with her self and her soul. In “Emily Dickinson and Popular Culture”, David S. Reynolds, a new historicism critic, wrote that it 's no surprise that the majority of Dickinson 's poetry was produced between 1858-1866, “It was a period of extreme consciousness about proliferation of varied women 's role in American culture.” It was a time where women were actively searching for more “literary” ways of self expression” (Reynolds 25). Dickinson was able to express her ideas and beliefs as a woman, something that was scandalous during this time period.
Hughes Gertrude Reif. (Spring 1986). Subverting the Cult of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson’s Critique of Woman’s Work. Legacy. Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 17-2
Dunlap, Anna. "The Complete Poems Of Emily Dickinson." Masterplots II: Women’S Literature Series (1995): 1-3. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
In William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, he portrays a young Ophelia, who battles with her desire to please her father and Hamlet, eventually driving her to her own demise. The way Ophelia is perceived by the other characters in the book is not how the reader perceives her. Her love for Hamlet is strong, and very apparent throughout the play. The other characters, however, view her in the opposite manner. Her own father, Polonius, labeled her as a whore, casting her aside as useless. Ophelia’s pain consumes her as she fails to please her family and the man she loves dearly.